1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for pairing the components of an authentication device having one or more mobile identification (ID) transmitters which serve as keys and having at least one base station assigned to an object. The present invention also relates to an authentication device having one or more mobile ID transmitters serving as keys, at least one base station assigned to an object, and a programming unit.
2. Background Art
Authentication devices serve to query an authorization in order to trigger a certain action by an identification (ID) transmitter if the ID transmitter gets within the range of a base station. Authentication devices are used, for example, to check the access authorization of a person carrying a mobile ID transmitter, for example, with regard to entry into a building or something similar. Authentication devices are also used to monitor a flow of goods. In this case, an ID transmitter is assigned to an individual item of goods or a batch, such as a palette, to monitor whether and possibly when the goods leave a warehouse, for example.
Keyless access authorization control devices include a reader (i.e., a base station) assigned to an object to be monitored and one or more ID transmitters. The object, for example, may be a door, a gate, or something similar. The ID transmitters are transponders. Query communication between an ID transmitter and the base station in order to authenticate the ID transmitter during the control operation of the access authorization control device may take place on a radio-frequency (RF) link, for example.
There are such systems which carry out unidirectional communication between the ID transmitter and the base station in order to authenticate the ID transmitter. Other such systems carry out bidirectional communication between these two elements to perform authentication. Authentication involves the ID transmitter transmitting stored data to the base station, and then the base station checking this data with regard to authorization. If the data indicates that the ID transmitter is authenticated, then the base station grants authorization to the ID transmitter and opens the object such as a door being monitored by this base station. Usually the communicated stored data includes a cryptic key such as a crypt code.
Access authorization control devices are known in which the ID transmitters and the readers are programmed or initialized by the manufacturer in a customer and object-specific way by storing a certain identification in the ID transmitters and the readers. The alignment or association of the individual components with one another is called “marriage” or “pairing”. Thus, when these access authorization control devices are used, it must be known before they are put into operation how many ID transmitters serving as keys and how many readers are needed. It also has to be known which ID transmitters should be recognized by which readers as having access authorization to an object. There is no problem as long as all parameters are known before the functional marriage or pairing of the individual components by the above-described measures. However, in case the number of ID transmitters or readers assigned to an object has to be increased or changed, all components (ID transmitters and readers) of the access authorization control device have to be remarried or paired with one another. The same goes for the case when individual ID transmitters are lost and have to be replaced by new ones.
DE 41 34 922 C2 discloses a system for controlling access to objects in which the readers are programmed by the ID transmitters. This makes possible the use of un-programmed readers so that it may be possible to expand an object by using more readers. However, in this system the manufacturer still pre-programs the ID transmitters. Thus, when adding ID transmitters to this system the user is still dependent on the manufacturer. In particular, this system can realize hierarchical closing structures only with difficulty, because each ID transmitter is also simultaneously a data carrier, and thus in theory each reader is capable of programming.